


The Odds Are There To Beat

by NicoleAnell



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-17
Updated: 2010-07-17
Packaged: 2017-10-10 14:51:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NicoleAnell/pseuds/NicoleAnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for 2010 porn battle. Prompts: "I love you", pregnancy, thousand kisses deep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Odds Are There To Beat

He adopts superstitions so easily. In another life he can barely remember, rituals and good-luck charms seemed as unscientifically ridiculous as all other forms of religion. But he is a convert to this too. It can only help and not hurt, he decides: the soma bracelets, the sprinkle of salt outside their tent, the determination from her cravings the child is a boy when its sex hasn't even formed yet. One week she sees him collecting apple seeds for her pillow. She asks "What are you doing?" with the same curious intensity she applies to... well, everything. When he tells her, she laughs. "You don't believe in that, Gaius," she says in a knowing voice.

"No, I don't, actually," he says, which is true, yet he was frightened of _not_ doing it all the same. He's just come to his senses and declared it a quaint, provincial, silly custom of some dead relatives on a dead colony, when Caprica takes a leap in the opposite direction and decides it's probably some form of heresy. What they should do instead, she says, is pray to God, and Gaius jumps on this train enthusiastically, even though God is no longer frakking him. He starts praying again, and soliciting prayers from anyone in the settlement who doesn't wish him dead.

In the fifth month, his prayers shift rapidly from God to her. Caprica tells him once, her face pale and heavy with nausea, that it was Ellen who killed her first child. Later she says "I didn't mean that", looking lost and guilty. She says, "Dr. Cottle said it was oxygen." He can see how she'd confuse this. His precautions adapt anyway. He falls into a habit of telling her almost constantly that he loves her and will never leave her and would like very much if she never left him. "I love you, Gaius" she answers sometimes, like it's a competition, or "I love you too," still excited and mystified by that particular turn of the phrase. At times, she only smiles indulgently and a little sadly, resting her head against him. She's afraid of him going to someone -- who, he has no idea, but obviously there always is someone. He slept with just one ex-cultist since they've been on Earth, in a way that seemed to happen so fast and naturally at the time that it barely occurred to him until afterwards that he'd done something wrong, and something she could never know about. He vows to be more vigilant about this in the future.

He worships her seven times a day, like it's a tenet of some obscure religious sect. He presses a kiss into her stomach and says "I love you" into her belly button. He sleeps with his hand nestled between her own palm and the baby, feeling every rumble and kick in his dreams. When they make love, he kisses her dozens of times, kisses her from collarbone to ear. They do it in the handmade chair Helo fashioned them as a gift (probably not for this purpose), that tilts forward and back the more energetic they are. They eventually tip over and slide to the floor, each hooking one leg around the other in an intimate tangly mess that started all this, her heel digging at his back encouragingly. In this moment he loves her more than his own life, which is a huge discovery. If they lose this one, they know it's not for lack of feeling.

They do nearly lose her. (Cravings aside, it seems to be a girl now.) It's a fear that sends Gaius into awful and blasphemous thoughts, like praying to God and his very real angels to save her and not the baby. _If you took one_, he thinks when a young doctor is cutting her, and then the idea won't leave his mind no matter how much he tries to push it out. The thought of raising a small, squirmy, wailing thing without her makes him die inside. The thought of life with her and not the baby is heartbreaking but reasonable. He half expects the other Six to come back and berate him for this, and he feels unbearably alone when she doesn't.

Regardless they do return home, his lover attached at the breast to a very fragile stranger they've named Emilia. He reminds himself he is a scientist, and she is a scarily rational creature more than not. Still: He memorizes her prayers and repeats them for forgiveness, and he wears a second bracelet so that Emilia will not die of sudden organ collapse in her sleep. He continues to say "I love you", for no reason at all.


End file.
